Managing Disaster Response with Mobile Data

Not only was the patrol-car computer instrumental in Monroe County, but sheriff's deputies used the same rugged laptop computers in Sarasota County on Florida's gulf coast as the hurricane threatened residents there.

Ten PCMobile laptops, produced by Cycomm Mobile Solutions, were in use during evacuations from the Keys which began Sept. 23, two days before the unwanted arrival of Hurricane Georges.

Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy Chuck Kellenberger said he used the laptops extensively during the emergency event. The WinForce software serving the PCMobiles is tied into the Florida Criminal Investigation Center (FCIC) and the National Criminal Investigation Center (NCIC), the computer networks that can identify and provide background on an individual by typing in a license plate number or name.

"We used it to try and identify who was who and we also used it during curfew to do person checks so we won't overload dispatch," Kellenberger said.

That allowed deputies on Marathon Key, the geographic center of the island chain where all the computers are being used, to prioritize who needed to be evacuated first. The Monroe County Sheriff's evacuation plan calls for the southern most islands to be evacuated initially under a mandatory order starting with visitors and tourists and eventually moving residents off the Keys. Each island moving northward is evacuated in succession in order to avoid traffic jams on U.S. 1, the sole highway going in and out of Monroe County.

In all, about 40,000 people were evacuated from Monroe County before Hurricane Georges hit. With that kind of volume of people being moved off the islands, Kellenberger said it was a relief to deputies and dispatchers that the computers were in use.

The use of the laptops freed valuable air-time on the radio that dispatchers need to prioritize. "You don't have to bother dispatch, because they were so inundated with 9-1-1 calls and trying to get their own selves situated. We were able to rely on the computer we had," Kellenberger said.

While patrol deputies felt at ease using the laptops during the emergency, supervisors distributing commands and emergency messages were equally comforted by the use of the computers, said Monroe County Sheriff's Sgt. Rick Ramsay, a shift supervisor for the substation on Marathon Key.

Ramsay said, from his point of view, one of the most difficult issues to deal with was a massive influx of manpower during the evacuations. Normally, he said, there are five deputies on patrol on Marathon Key. During the emergency event, there were 25 deputies on patrol.

The laptops were used extensively during the evacuations in managing deputies, Ramsay said. "We were sending out mass messages, detail assignments, and security-sensitive issues. A lot of stuff during the storm is relatively security sensitive and we didn't want the public to necessarily hear it."

The evacuations were a success. Despite $500 million in property losses and 3,000 homes damaged or destroyed in the category 2 storm, no lives were lost as a direct result of the storm in the Keys.

After plowing through the Keys, Hurricane Georges continued to spin into the Gulf of Mexico and the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office on Florida's west coast had mandatory evacuations for thousands of residents on the barrier islands in that county. With more than 200 PCMobile laptops in use by the Sheriff's Office, the computers were utilized on a broader scale than in Monroe County.

While Sarasota County didn't take a direct hit from Hurricane Georges, many of the effects of the storm swiped the coastline in the form of feeder bands. Sheriff's Deputy Cecil Elkins said officials in the Sarasota County Emergency Operations Center were providing detailed weather information over the laptops during evacuations.

"Those weather updates were telling us when we were going to get the feeder bands coming in and they were right on it. As soon as they told us, we had gusts that had people almost hanging on to things going horizontal at 80 mph winds," Elkins said.

The computers were also used by sheriff's officials to manage hurricane shelters, said Sheriff's Capt. Bill Balkwill. Data was transmitted by laptop into the Emergency Operations Center and relayed to the Red Cross, who would type a message directly back to the officer. "It was very easy for somebody in the EOC, if they needed to contact a law enforcement officer, to could come right to that particular workstation in the EOC and we'd send them a message," Balkwill said.

While the full brunt of the hurricane did not strike Sarasota County, some residual effects from the storm caused problems in addition to the evacuations, Balkwill said. One tornado did hit during the threat of Hurricane Georges and caused some damage to a mobile home park in Sarasota County.

"We used our laptop on that incident," Balkwill said. "We sent the information over the laptop so we wouldn't panic people who might be listening on the other end. We did send an officer out there and sure enough a roof was torn off a mobile home," Balkwill said.